Police in west Michigan handcuffed a real estate agent, his client and that man’s 15-year-old son after a neighbor wrongly reported that the three Black people were breaking into a home.
The agent, Eric Brown, told WOOD-TV that the police response Aug. 1 in Wyoming, including two out of five officers who drew their guns, felt aggressive and “threw me back.”
“I feel pretty anxious, or nervous or maybe even a little bit scared about what do I do to protect myself if I’m going to show a home and the authorities just get called on a whim like that,” Brown said. “Am I just automatically the criminal? Because that’s pretty much how we were treated in that situation.”
The Wyoming Police Department defended the officers’ actions and said they followed protocol for responding to a reported home invasion. The department said in a statement that Chief Kimberly Koster reached out to the three offering to meet with them and any other family members.
Roy Thorne, Brown’s client, called the experience in the Grand Rapids suburb “traumatizing” for him and his son.
The department released body camera footage that shows officers handcuffing them. One of the officers had his weapon out and pointed it at Thorne as he left the home in response to police commands.
Thorne said that officer apologized, “but at the same time, the damage is done.”
“My son was a little disturbed, he hasn’t seen anything like that … he’s not going to forget this,” he said.
The footage also shows police put Thorne in the backseat of a squad car with the door open after handcuffing him.
“Definitely not buying this place,” Thorne says on the video, after explaining that he was visiting the home with his real estate agent.
Brown used his cellphone to show police that he scheduled an appointment online to take Thorne to the house and had an access code to get inside. Thorne’s son was put in the backseat of another squad car briefly before the officer accompanying him was told to uncuff the teenager.
Another Black man with a similar car to the real estate agent’s vehicle was arrested after he went into the house without permission July 24, police said. That person also told police that he was interested in purchasing the house but was not with a real estate agent and didn’t have the homeowner’s permission to go inside.
A neighbor saw Brown’s car parked in front of the house on Aug. 1 and called police, wrongly reporting that the intruder had returned, the statement said. Brown’s car is the same color as that first person’s but a different make and model.
“Somebody dropped the ball somewhere,” one of the officers can be heard saying to another after Brown and Thorne explained why they were at the house.
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
